Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: THAGILA MARIA DOS SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : THAGILA MARIA DOS SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA
DATE: 30/04/2026
TIME: 14:30
LOCAL: Sala 913 - DAN/CCHLA
TITLE:

IS EATING A POLITICAL ACT? THE CIRCUITS OF FOOD ACTIVISM IN THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO/BRAZIL

KEY WORDS:

Food activism; Reflexive food modernity; Life trajectories; Female agency; Time; São Paulo.

PAGES: 130
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Antropologia
SUBÁREA: Antropologia Urbana
SUMMARY:

This research examines food activism and the politicization of food in the city of São Paulo. Widely known as the "city of stone", São Paulo is also home to a vibrant activist scene that brings together struggles for sustainability, access to organic food, the fight against hunger, and the valorization of food heritage. In Brazil, food activism has been studied predominantly through the lens of consumption studies, emphasizing the multiple ways in which the act of buying and consuming becomes a repertoire of political contestation. This thesis seeks to understand food activism and the politicization of food in São Paulo from the perspective of the anthropology and sociology of food, arguing that food activism is an expression of a reflexive food modernity (POULAIN, 2019), that is, of the ways in which individuals and groups react to the dismantling of traditional norms that once regulated eating, brought about by processes of urbanization, industrialization, gastronomization, and the medicalization of food. Food activism is understood here as a product of the way society organizes its food anxiety — a constant of human experience with food, whose forms of expression shift from society to society and from context to context. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted within food activism circuits in the city of São Paulo and on social media, complemented by semi-structured interviews and informal conversations, this thesis demonstrates that urban food activism is organized around a triad: the life trajectories of activists, constituted by the environmental strand and the scarcity strand, and expressed empirically through the reinvention of the rural, family experiences, and bodily illness; the centrality of female agency and the politicization of care; and the resignification of time as a political category and marker of class distinction.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1215344 - JULIE ANTOINETTE CAVIGNAC
Interno - 1152605 - FRANCISCO CLEITON VIEIRA SILVA DO RÊGO
Interna - 1642956 - JULIANA GONCALVES MELO
Externo à Instituição - ANDREA CIACCHI - UNILAB